Entitlement U.S.A.: Colleges as Attendance Centers
Several years ago, I chuckled when I dropped my young daughter off at a friend’s elementary school. In fact, the school was named an “Attendance Center.” I never learned why “school” was suddenly out of fashion. How apt a phrase for what is happening in higher education, as every politician and president (Bush and Obama included) promise “more, more, more!” A new book is getting acclaim for documenting how simply funding more college “attendees” is a waste of money: Jackson Toby, The Lowering of Higher Education in America: Why Financial Aid Should be Based on Student Performance. Toby hammers home the message that always shocks people when I tell them that most of those who go to college will never graduate with a degree. Moreover, mere “attendance” at a college does little to improve earnings and leaves many in debt. The situation is even worse at community colleges, where politicians at the state and national levels are heavily subsidizing two-year college education. By accepting all, the old whip of “working hard in high school” to “get into college” is gone–every K-12 student knows they can go to college whether they prepare themselves or not. The following excerpt from an article on the abysmal state of community college “attendance centers” highlights how much worse the problem is at that level:
“A cursory look at the data is not encouraging. Although 41 percent of America’s college-bound students enter community colleges each year , only 28 percent of this cohort actually complete their studies and earn a degree , an even more dismal outcome than that displayed at the nation’s baccalaureate colleges, where 56 percent manage to graduate . These depressing statistics haven’t dampened the general consensus favoring support of community colleges because proponents appear to believe that college “access” trumps successful college completion and that “some college is better than none.” Refuting the latter point, U.S. community college non-graduates have only marginally higher earnings and lower unemployment rates than high school graduates and do far less well than their counterparts that manage to complete their studies. The disappointing outcomes at community colleges are to some extent hard-wired into four aspects of their design. These institutions are proudly and aggressively “open admissions” which means that there are no academic criteria to get in except, in most places, a high school diploma. . . .”
Readers interested in learning the graduation rates (and other vital statistics) of any college in America can find it at http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ Will financial aid be tied to merit rather than a free lunch for everyone, regardless of performance? The political incentives work against any such reform. After all, the citizens of Entitlement U.S.A. believe it is their unalienable right to a discounted (or free) college education. Furthermore, politicians count votes and “something for nothing” is always popular. On we go . . .
One of the reasons we all should applaud the DoEd Office of Inspector General’s raking over the coals of several regional accreditation bodies is that the OIG reports reveal that even the “seat time”/attendance criterion for the definition of the credit hour is being widely abused.
As the OIG implies by its official warning letter to the Higher Learning Commission of NCACS, such abuse is perhaps most easily identified in the accreditation of some online for-profit institutions (cf. http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/auditreports/AlertMemorandums/l13j0006.pdf)
At issue, of course, is the default rate on Federally-funded student loans which, in the case of American InterContinental University Online, was over 10%. In short, this is one area where encouraging any and all to enroll results in the enrichment of a privately-held institution which, even without any attendance records, is entitled to keep 50% of the tuition so raised when the student drops out.
That said, how many of our “traditional” non-profit colleges and universities conduct summer and inter-session courses on campus for three weeks and three credits (or during the semester for four credits and only three contact hours)– where no truly credible case can be made that one hour of homework is assigned for every hour of Carnegie unit “seat-time” instruction?
Indeed, “attendance” is the new watchword of the day — and how higher education comes to grips with its disappearance as a traditional criterion of credit hour assessment is one of the most crucial developments to watch. The gradual erosion of “attendance”/contact in the face of verbal “quality assurances” will affect every aspect of higher education, including the definitions of both faculty and student “full-time” load.
Also see “Seat Time at the AAC&U” by NAS: http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=780
For all the jokes about “seat time,” it is nevertheless true that the Carnegie unit (one hour of contact per week for a semester equals one credit hour) is the basis of so many of higher education’s structures that its dismantling will be nothing short of revolutionary — and dismantled it will be. The handwriting is clearly on the wall. But make no mistake about it, even the DoEd will “not go gentle into that good night” (with apologies to Dylan Thomas), for Federally-financed student loans are wedded to the Carnegie unit.
The crux of the matter is the challenge to the credit hour concept by asynchronous learning technologies which “unhook” the student from the professor in real time.
For those who believe that the student-professor relationship is essential to learning, this has been a dramatic shock to the system. Suddenly, the loss of real-time interaction has introduced a whole set of new demands upon the professoriate and the entire system of higher education. The concept of course as “what can be covered in a semester of three contact hours over fifteen weeks” has been thrown into question.
Of course, there had already been correspondence courses and independent studies which were also largely asynchronous, but they were “cribbed” upon the standard Carnegie unit course — indeed, the same “materials” and testing were often used in correspondence and independent study versions of the same course.
But with the new information technologies came the mainstreaming of asynchronicity and the mechanization of “test correction” and “explanation” — further challenges to the personalization of instruction by persons — and with the ironic potential of greater customization of content, time, and scheduling for the student than the “real-time” “seat-time” course.
Further, no longer the exception to the rule, online education is becoming an integral part of many, if not soon most, undergraduate students’ progress to a degree. Indeed, the Sloan Foundation was surprised to discover that its support and assessment of the then fledgling SUNY Learning Network revealed that the majority of the online courses were taken by students already on campus — indicating that the rationale of the users was not the same as the rationale of the planners.
And so, of course, whether traditionalists liked it or not, the practice of outcomes assessment began to be mainstreamed by administrations as these DL programs were being developed for their tuition revenue — managed by administrators in large part because most faculty would not take ownership of anything that undermined the uniqueness of the “seat-time” bond between the individual instructor, the course, and the student in “real time.” That there was a necessity to “equilibrate” the value of the “online” with the “real time” in the information age has been lost on a majority of the faculty who have had no desire to work in concert to “standardize” quality — and who believed erroneously that their academic freedom is an individual and First Amendment right, and not based in the traditions of the university, the collective faculty guild, and codified in contracts.
Of course, it is understandable that faculty would jealously guard the system they have always known. Indeed, it has been easy for both administrations and faculty to negotiate teaching workloads in terms of hours — the forty-hour work week has been the basis of the definition of full-time employment in most professions, after all. And time and expertise are what professionals “sell,” are they not?
However, as budgets tighten, administrations refuse to trim themselves for indeed, they literally “embody” the budget crisis: the exponential growth of administration in comparison to the full-time faculty sector, or even all of the faculty, has been documented nation-wide. And so, now, the faculty which, Luddite-like, have refused to take charge of the outcomes assessment necessary for these evolving technological paradigms, have left themselves at the mercy of administrators who have taken the “individual course” concept — so prized by the faculty — and turned it into a commodity for sale to students as work for hire by contingent faculty and/or online software programs.
Rather than viewing a course as a fluid and evolving search for truth — at the nexus of teaching and research — which is integrated in and takes its life from another dynamic system called a discipline of faculty — the majority of faculty have ironically left themselves naked before the forces of administration-imposed-and-controlled outcomes assessment and the future will not be “pretty.” Indeed, the demands which management will soon inflict upon collective bargaining (wherever faculty are organized) will likely be hitherto unheard of, and unimaginable, in the history of the university.
It is more than time to fasten our “seat”-belts — the dismantling of the Carnegie unit is going to be a very bumpy ride. Our “attendance” at the university as faculty may no longer be required….
As bad as those graduation rates appear, the reality might be even worse when you consider all of the grade inflation in recent years.